Moving all of the books upstairs was my first thought when I saw aerial video of the flood waters hitting the library. But it was later revealed that the 2nd floor wasn't capable of holding anywhere near that kind of weight.
It sounds like we still have a few weeks to wait for the opening. I'm looking forward to taking my daughter fishing here as soon as it opens.
This won't hurt traffic in the least. The people complaining clearly don't ever spend time downtown anyway. Bring on the progress!
This would be an entirely different story if this had been a public school.
I often crave shawarma wraps from Pita'z in the Armstrong food court.
I think the biggest problem with the downtown branch is its hours of operation. 9-5 and closed on weekends? I'd love to take my kids there more often, but those hours are quite restrictive. I understand the library has budget concerns, so I'm not faulting them for not being open all day. But why not 11-7 and a skeleton crew for a couple of hours on weekends?
Despite this, I still go here more than any other library location. I love having a centralized location downtown, even now that I don't work in that area anymore.
The Green Square Park area is perfectly safe. And after years of working and shopping downtown, I've never had park far from where I was going (except the Fourth of July). People never cease to surprise and confuse me with their fear of downtown.
The areas they are considering are safe enough, in that they weren't flooded in the 2008 flood. Westdale would be terrible, as it's out on the edge of the city. Keep the main branch centrally located and place a small branch in the Westdale area like it used to be.
E-book readers will definitely change how libraries FUNCTION within the next 50 years, but NOT make them IRRELEVANT. Even if everybody owns a cheap e-reader, the copyright holders (publishers, authors, etc.) still won't want people to be able to read things for free. We'll need a library to provide a vehicle for the community to purchase e-books and other not-free media (digital magazines and electronic newspapers) to share amongst the members of the community.